I'll have some turkey with a side of inspiration, please...

Our family, like so many of you, usually goes around the table and everyone tells one thing they're grateful for. There's always some wisenheimer who says they're grateful they didn't have to cook, or that I didn't make beets or some other obscure thing because the very emotion of being grateful is sometimes hard for people to share, but by the time we make the circuit, we've all eked out some form of gratitude for something in our lives.

CNN Heroes - Everyday people changing the world
Thanksgiving night has become the ultimate gratitude trip. There is the most amazing program on television, and its becoming as much a part of thanksgiving as the post meal nap. It's CNN's Heroes and it airs on CNN Thursday night at 9:00 pm Eastern standard time. If you've never seen this program and don't know anything about it, it's the celebration and acknowledgment of people throughout the world who make a difference in the lives of others.

These heroes are nominated online by people in their communities many of them the very people they've impacted. If for some reason you can't watch the program you can go to cnn.com/heroes and read the stories and watch the videos. It truly is inspirational.The categories for the awards are: defending children, defending the planet, protecting the powerless, dedication to the health of humankind, and there's a special award for people under 25 who've impacted others.

The wonderful thing is these "heroes" are mainly everyday people who saw a need and started in small ways to make a difference for someone.

There's the woman in Arizona who decided to welcome and help refugee families by finding them shelter, furniture and food, or the street teacher who pushes a cart around the slums and teaches kids to read, or the ordinary guy who moved to Darfur and provided fresh drinking water for the victims of the genocide and now provides water where needed throughout the world, or the 20 year old who lost both of his legs in an accident who now has a foundation which provides kids with Prosthetics, or the man who donates wheelchairs to kids in Iraq.

There were over 7,000 submissions for the CNN Heroes program. That's a lot of people making a difference.

So at our Thanksgiving meal this year, I think I'll be grateful that there are so many everyday heroes out there and that there's a great program on television that thanks them all for the difference they make.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pam, the Real Estate Mom